And now I'm feeling green
When I was a kid we used to go to our babysitter Rosie's house before and after school until my mom came home. There were three boys there about my same age - boys who looked for trouble and almost always found it. One day they came home from school with an armful of books and a sly look on their faces. They tucked the books away into their backpacks, and snuck out the front door. Wanting to know what they were doing, and probably just looking to rat them out and get them into trouble, I followed them down the block. I could see them just ahead, climbing into the elementary school dumpster. The dumpster I always walked past quickly, holding my breath against the stench of sour milk, stepping carefully to avoid the streams of scummy milk running out of the bottom like a river. They were inside, rooting around. "Hey, what are you doing?" I yelled. "There's books in here! Lots of them!" I climbed in, grabbed a book and scurried out, sure that a rat was seconds away from jumping out and gnawing off my face. I ran back to Rosie's, sat down and paged through my treasure. An old junior high science textbook, cover corners worn and pages covered with the handwriting of students from years gone by. A TREASURE.
Days later, when my mom spotted the book she'd wanted to know where I'd gotten it. The goody two-shoes that I was, I spilled all the beans, a look of horror crossing my mom's face when I explained where I'd gotten it. She let me keep it, probably knowing that the contents wouldn't hold my interest nearly as long as the adventure I'd had in getting it.
That lure of treasure hunting stayed with me. Later in college, I upgraded from dumpsters to second-hand clothing stores, discovering perfectly worn bell-bottom jeans and vintage vests. I bought a beautiful rose-covered sofa from a garage sale to use in my first apartment, only staying in my possession for that one year because my dad said he'd rather push it off the moving trailer while driving down the freeway than see it for one day in his garage. To outfit my second apartment, Sevda and I went to a furniture store that specialized in "slightly used" hotel furniture and bought two chairs with matching ottomans (ottomen?) so that we no longer had to sit on the floor.
All of these treasures are long gone, given away to friends or strangers. I never thought of it as recycling really, more as a way to get some good loot without very much money. I liked finding things that had been well worn, already broken in and comfortable. Discovering a treasure in the midst of other not-so-good stuff, picking out the thing that I could make my own.
Today, for some people, this desire to reuse has become an environmental endeavor, an attempt to conserve. I read an article yesterday about a woman who is a "freegan" and is fully dedicated to utilizing things that others have cast off as garbage instead of consuming new products. The old term "dumpster diving" has been renamed as "waste reclamation" and "urban foraging", taking "shabby chic" to a whole new level. In theory, I think this is a great idea, a way lower the cost of living while eliminating garbage through reuse. I was with this woman through the article until it got to the point where it described her making lunch out of pate she'd found in a dumpster and salad dressing using miso she'd found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown.
I get it that this woman is concerned with the waste that she sees in her city and sees the opportunity to reuse. She looks around and sees the restaurants that throw out perfectly edible ingredients, stores that toss out groceries that are almost expired. I admire her thriftiness and ingenuity in coming up with meals for her family out of things. If she were a pioneer woman and she were making meals for her family out of the things she found around her, foraging through the forest for food to eat, I'd admire that. That, I can see. But she's not a pioneer woman, and the things she's finding are mixed in there with trash and germs and more than likely, sitting just on top of a layer of scummy milk pooling up waiting to ooze on out of that dumpster.
I guess for me, it boils down to this simple formula:
Trash that can be disinfected = Potential for treasure
Trash that can be ingested = NO!
On the table tonight: Nothing, unless the neighbors had something good last night.
Days later, when my mom spotted the book she'd wanted to know where I'd gotten it. The goody two-shoes that I was, I spilled all the beans, a look of horror crossing my mom's face when I explained where I'd gotten it. She let me keep it, probably knowing that the contents wouldn't hold my interest nearly as long as the adventure I'd had in getting it.
That lure of treasure hunting stayed with me. Later in college, I upgraded from dumpsters to second-hand clothing stores, discovering perfectly worn bell-bottom jeans and vintage vests. I bought a beautiful rose-covered sofa from a garage sale to use in my first apartment, only staying in my possession for that one year because my dad said he'd rather push it off the moving trailer while driving down the freeway than see it for one day in his garage. To outfit my second apartment, Sevda and I went to a furniture store that specialized in "slightly used" hotel furniture and bought two chairs with matching ottomans (ottomen?) so that we no longer had to sit on the floor.
All of these treasures are long gone, given away to friends or strangers. I never thought of it as recycling really, more as a way to get some good loot without very much money. I liked finding things that had been well worn, already broken in and comfortable. Discovering a treasure in the midst of other not-so-good stuff, picking out the thing that I could make my own.
Today, for some people, this desire to reuse has become an environmental endeavor, an attempt to conserve. I read an article yesterday about a woman who is a "freegan" and is fully dedicated to utilizing things that others have cast off as garbage instead of consuming new products. The old term "dumpster diving" has been renamed as "waste reclamation" and "urban foraging", taking "shabby chic" to a whole new level. In theory, I think this is a great idea, a way lower the cost of living while eliminating garbage through reuse. I was with this woman through the article until it got to the point where it described her making lunch out of pate she'd found in a dumpster and salad dressing using miso she'd found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown.
I get it that this woman is concerned with the waste that she sees in her city and sees the opportunity to reuse. She looks around and sees the restaurants that throw out perfectly edible ingredients, stores that toss out groceries that are almost expired. I admire her thriftiness and ingenuity in coming up with meals for her family out of things. If she were a pioneer woman and she were making meals for her family out of the things she found around her, foraging through the forest for food to eat, I'd admire that. That, I can see. But she's not a pioneer woman, and the things she's finding are mixed in there with trash and germs and more than likely, sitting just on top of a layer of scummy milk pooling up waiting to ooze on out of that dumpster.
I guess for me, it boils down to this simple formula:
Trash that can be disinfected = Potential for treasure
Trash that can be ingested = NO!
On the table tonight: Nothing, unless the neighbors had something good last night.
She will need all of her saved money to pay for the medical expenses from frequent cases of food poisoning.
On the upside, if she ever goes to Mexico, she can definitely drink the water!
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There was a time when a "freegan" was more commonly referred to as a "hobo".
Leftover miso? Ew.
But cutting down on personal consumption and waste...all good.
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